When I think of the strange liminal space that is the week between Christmas and New Year’s, I think of Emily in Paris.
When the second season dropped in December 2021, I was working out of my childhood bedroom like so many people who find themselves wedged awkwardly between adult responsibilities and nostalgia-drenched arrested development this time of year. Darren Star’s (Sex and the City) frothy, stakesless Netflix series, with its paper doll-thin characters and beautiful European vistas, somehow fit the temporal unreality of that time perfectly.
Season 5, arriving on the streamer Dec. 18, feels like a similar return to form for this often baffling and sometimes charming oddity of a TV show. Years after Emily in Paris’ premiere season ruffled feathers over French stereotypes, unrealistic influencing, and questionable fashion choices alike, even its most vocal detractors have seemingly accepted it as a part of the Netflix churn, sandwiched in between Love is Blind spin-offs and the umpteenth Stranger Things roll-out.
Emily (Lily Collins) and co haven’t really earned the comfortable rhythm they’ve settled into across the pond, but honestly? That delusional, maximalist confidence is key to its chirpy charm.
If you’ve forgotten the particulars of Emily’s European sojourns over the show’s 16-month hiatus, not to worry! All you really need to know is that she’s currently leading her PR firm Agence Grateau’s newly opened Rome office, where she’s found a new beau in hunky Italian businessman Marcello Muratori (Eugenio Franceschini). Early episodes cheekily erase the Paris in the title and replace it with a bright red, cursive “Rome,” much like later episodes of Jane the Virgin crossed out the “virgin” part of its title card after its heroine finally did the deed.
Whereas Season 4 reveled in the escapist thrills of Emily’s newfound Roman holiday, what depth can be wringed from the latest installment finds her reflecting upon the realities of living abroad long-term. Now caught between life in Paris and Rome, she’s done a 180 from the quirky, fish-out-of-water American expat we first met back in 2020. She went viral for Instagramming a dog taking a dump in a Parisian park in Season 1, and now she’s rolling her eyes while corralling a group of influencers around an Italian hidden gem! People really can change.
During one particularly on-the-nose scene, Marcello leads Emily to a peephole looking into a Maltese garden within the Vatican, which the couple views while standing on Italian soil.
“Three countries at once,” Emily remarks, to which her boyfriend suavely replies, “Just like you.”
Now that Emily’s initial alienation has given way to shaky conversational French and only the occasional painfully loud patterned blazer, the series has increasingly shifted towards an ensemble format. The trouble is, our protagonist’s newfound comfort level has eliminated what little narrative friction Emily in Paris had.
Now that her colleagues sing her praises, there are no campy cultural clashes to play for laughs. Apart from checking in with Emily’s singer bestie Mindy (Ashley Park, always delightful), who finds herself torn between her ex and one of Emily’s exes, we also spend much more time with her coworkers.
Free spirit Luc (Bruno Gouery) quips about living on a houseboat, while Emily’s formidable boss Sylvie (Phillipine Leroy-Beaulieu), usually a cast standout, is largely stranded amid yet another affair storyline. Poor Julien (Samuel Arnold) is sidelined almost entirely, save for a brief scene of him and his boyfriend at a Pride celebration that is somehow also about Emily’s deeply heterosexual love life.
Ultimatums about career-ending office closures and secret romances are issued over runway-side cocktail hours, but really, who are we kidding? None of us came to Emily in Paris for cutthroat intrigue.
The show seems more aware than ever that it functions best as a colorful, Cocomelon-esque adult travelogue: with flimsy conflicts that can be swept away so easily, it doesn’t matter if you missed a beat while online shopping. In all honesty, fluffy headlines about French President Emmanuel Macron and Rome Mayor Robert Gualtieri playfully feuding after the series’ location was moved to Italy are far more dramatic.
Even that won’t last long, as the latter half of the season hints that, while they split their time between the two countries in Season 5, the Emily in Paris gang is ultimately destined to end up in the City of Love. It might be running out of steam, but as a piece of low-stakes eye candy, it’s right where it needs to be.
